A California federal court recently dismissed the majority of the counterclaims asserted by the Writers Guild of America (the Guild) against William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, Creative Artists Agency, and United Talent Agency (the Agencies) in a highly publicized suit over the Agencies’ right to receive “packaging” fees.

The case arose from the Guild’s decision last year to prohibit talent agents from earning packaging fees on film and television projects. For decades, it was common practice for studios to pay talent agents “packaging” fees for acquiring and pooling talent (e.g., assembling writers, actors, and directors, as talent agencies have a substantial roster of such talent) for a given project. These fees frequently consist of a combination of license fees paid by studios for a project and a percentage of the project’s gross receipts. The Guild banned this practice last year, claiming that packaging fees create conflicts of interest between talent agents and the writers they represent. In the Guild’s view, enabling talent agents to participate in the profits of a film or television project through packaging (1) lowers production budgets (thereby reducing writer compensation) and (2) lowers the agents’ incentive to increase their writer-clients’ compensation. The Guild favors a commission-based system, where a talent agent takes a percentage of their clients’ earnings, which it believes better incentivizes talent agents to maximize their writer-clients’ compensation. Following the Guild’s ban, the Agencies filed suit, alleging the packaging prohibition amounts to an illegal group boycott in violation of the Sherman Act.…Continue Reading Counterclaims on the Cutting-Room Floor: How a Central District Court Cut Down the Writers Guild’s Countersuit Against Hollywood’s Talent Agencies

A federal district court recently dismissed an invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress action against Tumblr brought by a Connecticut woman whose ex-boyfriend had uploaded a series of nude photographs on social media and the revenge porn site myex.com. The court found that Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) expressly preempted the woman’s claims, which treated Tumblr like the “publisher” or “speaker” of the offensive postings.

Although the nude photographs of the plaintiff were taken down, they soon migrated to Tumblr, where users could view the photos, along with her name, links to her social media accounts, and other identifying personal information. The plaintiff repeatedly engaged Tumblr to remove the unauthorized intimate photographs, only to have the images reposted by third parties following removal. The plaintiff ultimately initiated a lawsuit against Tumblr, claiming it did not preemptively remove the photographs even after receiving repeated notice of unauthorized uploads.

Two federal courts recently dismissed defamation claims brought against the New York Times and the Kansas City Star, finding the subject articles employed standard investigative journalism techniques that immunized the newspapers from liability under state defamation laws.

In Croce v. New York Times Co., No. 18-4158 (6th Cir. July 17, 2019), the 6th Circuit upheld the dismissal of an Ohio State University cancer researcher’s defamation claim, finding that a “reasonable reader” would interpret the article as presenting both sides of the controversy. The suit arose after the Times published an article examining Dr. Carlo Croce’s cancer research in the context of a broader piece about the inherent conflicts present when large research institutions reap millions of dollars in grant money for “star” researchers, and then are put in the position of investigating those researchers’ methods.…Continue Reading Fair and Balanced Reporting Pays Off: Newspapers Avoid Defamation Suits by Sticking to the Truth